Children of Light Read online

  “Do you see that man at the bar,” she asked the girl, “the big one with the blond lady?” The waitress followed Shelley’s nod. “We’d like to buy him a drink.”

  “Cut it out, Shelley,” Walker said.

  “When you give him the drink,” Shelley said, “tell him we’re putting assholes to sleep tonight. And we got his number.”

  “Shut up,” Walker said. “Forget it,” he told the waitress. The waitress was tall and dark, with a long melancholy face. One side of her mouth twitched in a weird affectless smile.

  “You,” she said to Shelley, “you used to work here, right?”

  Shelley wiggled her eyebrows, Groucho Marx-like.

  “That’s right,” Walker said.

  “So,” the girl asked, “you don’t want me to …?”

  “Of course not,” Walker said.

  “I myself hail from Tougaloo,” Shelley said to Walker. “May one inquire where you yourself hail from?”

  “It’s so gruesome,” Walker said. “It’s like a wildlife short.”

  “What animal is he, hey, Gord?”

  “I don’t know why we come here anymore,” Walker said.

  “I bring you here to listen to dialogue,” Shelley said. “ ’Cause I’m your agent’s gal Friday. It’s my job.”

  “It’s so fucking depressing.”

  “Slices of life, Gordo. That’s what we want from you. Verismo.”

  “Do you see that guy? Does he really look like that? Is it something wrong with me?”

  “No,” she said. She spoke slowly, judiciously. “It’s a wildlife short.”

  “She doesn’t see him.”

  “She doesn’t seem to, no.”

  “It’s loneliness,” Walker said. He shook his head. “That’s how bad it gets.”

  “Oh, yeah, Gordon? Tell me about it.”

  “I hope,” he said, “you didn’t get me down here to pick on.”

  “No, baby, no.” She patted his hand and smiled sadly. She shook her head vigorously and tossed her hair, and made mouths at him.

  He watched her, wondering if she were not on speed. Of course, he thought, it was difficult to tell with Shelley. She was a clamorous presence, never at rest. Even quiet, her reverie cast a shadow and her silences had three kinds of irony. She was a workout.

  “What are you doing with yourself, Shelley?”

  “Well,” she said, “sometimes I have assignations in crummy ocean-front hotels. Sometimes I get high and go through the car wash.”

  “Going to open your own shop soon?”

  She was watching the man with the voice and his companion. She shrugged.

  “I’m not sure I want to be an agent, Gordon.”

  “Sure you do,” he said.

  “Look,” Shelley said, raising her chin toward the man, “he’s gonna light a Virginia Slim. His balls will fall off.”

  A squat man of sixty-odd passed by their table, carrying an acoustic guitar.

  “Hiya, Tex,” he called to Shelley. “How you doin’, kid?”

  “Hi,” Shelley replied brightly, parodying her own Texas accent. “Real good, hey.”

  The older man had stopped to talk. Shelley turned her back on him and he walked away, climbed the Miramar’s tiny stage and began to set up his instrument.

  “That fuck,” she told Walker. “He thinks he’s my buddy. When I worked here he practically called me a hooker to my face.”

  “I can’t remember how long ago it was you worked here,” Walker said.

  “Can’t you, Gordo? Bet that’s because you don’t wanna. Eight years ago. When I left Paramount.” She sipped from her drink and turned toward the picture window. The last light of the day had drained from the sky but no lights were lighted in the Miramar Lounge. “Yes, sir, boy. Eight years ago this very night, as they say.”

  “Funny period that was.”

  “Oh, golly,” Shelley said. “Did we have good times? We sure did. And was I fucked up? I sure was.”

  “Remember gently.”

  “Clear is how I remember. I had little cutie-pie tights. Remember my cutie-pie tights?”

  “Do I ever,” Walker said.

  “Yep,” she said. “Little cutie-pie tights and I wanted to be an actress and I wanted to be your girl. High old times, all right.”

  The elderly man with the guitar began dancing about the little stage. He struck up his guitar and went into a vigorous rendering of “Mack the Knife” in the style of Frank Sinatra.

  “That rat-hearted old fucker,” Shelley said. “I don’t know if I can take it.”

  “How come he called you a hooker?”

  “Well shit, I guess he thought I was one.” Her eyes were fixed on the singer. “So I called him on it. So he cussed me out and fired me. Now I’m his old friend.”

  “And you a rabbi’s daughter.”

  “Yeah, that’s right, Gordon. You remember, huh? It amuses you.”

  “The rabbi’s raven-haired daughter. Makes a picture.”

  She blew smoke at him. “My father was a social worker in a hospital. He was a clinical psychologist but he had been ordained. Or whatever it’s called.”

  Walker nodded. “You told me that too, I guess.”

  “I told you it all, Gordo. The story of my life. You’re forgetting me, see?”

  He shook his head slowly. “No.” He was aware of her eyes on him.

  “Hey, you don’t look too good, old buddy. You looked O.K. in Seattle.”

  “I been on a drunk. This is what I look like now.”

  “You’re nuts, Gordon. You live like you were twenty-five. I’m supposed to be a hard-drivin’ player and I’m not in it with you.”

  “It’s a failure of inner resources. On my part, I mean.”

  “You better be taking your vitamins.”

  “Connie left me,” Walker said.

  He watched her pall-black eyes fix on his. She was always looking for the inside story, Shelley. Maybe there was more to it, he thought. Maybe she cares.

  She drew herself up and studied the smoke from her cigarette. Her mouth had a bitter curl to it; for a moment she was aged and somber.

  “Well,” she said, “wouldn’t I have liked to hear that eight years ago.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get to hear it eight years ago,” Walker said. “You get to hear it now.”

  She smiled, a thin sad smile.

  “Actually,” she said, “Al told me.”

  “Ah. So you knew.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I knew.”

  “Hard-ass, aren’t you?”

  “Come off it, Gordon. You can’t cry on my shoulder. It’s a fucking ritual. She’ll be back.”

  He turned away from her. The candlelight and the red and green lanterns were reflected in the seaward picture window, together with the faces of the customers. In the glass, everything looked warm and glad, a snug harbor.

  “I hope you’re right.”

  She only nodded, holding her faint smile.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t take it seriously,” Walker said. “But I think I do.”

  A ripple of anger passed across Shelley’s face, shattering her comedy smile. Her brow furrowed.

  “Do you, Gordon? Then why the hell are you …” Her voice was trembling. She stopped in the middle of a word.

  “What, Shell?”

  “Nothing. I’m not getting into it.” She was facing the bar and her gaze had fastened once more on the crooning seducer and his fair intended. Her eyes were troubled. “Look at him, Gordon. He eats shit, that guy. He’s a hyena. Let’s take him out.” She turned to Walker and seized his sleeve. “Come on, man. You can do it. You would have once. Punch the son of a bitch.”

  “I’m on his side,” Walker said. “He’s a bon viveur. He’s a sport like me.” He picked up the drink beside his hand and finished it.

  Shelley Pearce shook her head sadly and leaned her head against her palm.

  “Oh wow,” she said.

  “I suppose we could effe
ct a rescue,” Walker said. “We could hide her out in our room.”

  “Our room?” She might have been surprised. He thought her double take somewhat stylized. “We have a room?”

  “Yes, we have a room. Should we require one.”

  “How many beds it got?”

  “How many beds? I don’t know. Two, I guess. What difference does it make?”

  Shelley was on her feet.

  “Let’s go look at it. I think I want to swim in the pool.”

  “The pool,” Walker said, and laughed.

  She laughed with him.

  “That’s right. Remember the pool? Where employees weren’t allowed to swim eight years ago tonight? Got your bathing suit?” She worried him to his feet, clutching at his elbow. “Come on, come on. Last one in’s a chickenshit.”

  He got up and followed her out, past the bar. As they went by, the crooning man gave them a languid eyes-right.

  “Do you enjoy great music?” he was asking the blond woman. “Symphonies? Concertos? Divertimenti?”

  They rode the automatic elevator to the top floor and followed the soiled carpet to their door. The room behind it was large and high-ceilinged with yellow flaking walls. The furniture was old and faintly Chinese in ambiance. The air conditioner was running at full power and it was very cold inside. Walker went to the window and turned it off. Two full-length glass doors led to a narrow terrace that overlooked the beach. He unlocked the bolt that held them in place and forced them open. A voluptuous ocean breeze dispelled the stale chill inside.

  “This is neat,” Shelley said. She examined the beds, measuring her length on each. Walker went out to the hall to fetch ice. When he returned, she was on the terrace leaning over the balustrade.

  “People used to throw ice,” she told Walker. “When I worked the front tables people would throw ice cubes at us from the rooms. It would make you crazy.”

  She came inside, took the ice from Walker and drew a bottle of warm California champagne from her carry bag. As she unwired the wine, she looked about the room with brittle enthusiasm.

  “Well,” she said, “they sell you the whole trip here, don’t they? Everything goes with everything.” Her eyes were bright.

  “You on speed, Shell?”

  She coaxed the cork out with a bathroom towel and poured the wine into two water glasses.

  “I don’t use speed anymore, Gordon. I have very little to do with drugs. I brought a joint for us, though, and I smoked a little before I went out.”

  “I wasn’t trying to catch you out,” Walker said. “I just asked out of … curiosity or something.”

  “Sure,” she said, smiling sweetly. “You wondered if I was still pathological. But I’m not. I’m just fine.”

  “Do you have to get stoned to see me?”

  She inclined her head and looked at him nymph-wise from under gathered brows. She was lighting a joint. “It definitely helps, Gordo.”

  Walker took the joint and smoked of it. He could watch himself exhale in a vanity-table mirror across the room. The light was soft, the face in the glass distant and indistinct.

  Shelley’s cassette recorder was playing Miles Davis’ “In a Silent Way.” She took the joint back from Walker; they sat in silence, breathing in the sad stately music. The dope was rich and syrupy. After a while, Shelley undressed and struggled into a sleek one-piece bathing suit. He went to hold her but she put the flat of her hand against his chest, gently turning him away.

  “I want to swim,” she said. “I want to while I still know about it.”

  Walker changed into his own suit. They gathered up towels and their ice-filled champagne glasses and rode the elevator down to the pool.

  The light around the San Epifanio Beach pool was everywhere besieged by darkness; black wells and shadows hid the rust, the mildew and the foraging resident rats. There were tables under the royal palms, pastel cabanas, an artificial waterfall.

  Walker eased himself into a reclining chair; he was very high. He could feel his own limp smile in place as he watched Shelley walk to the board, spring and descend in a pleasing arc to the glowing motionless water. Across the pool from where he sat, the candles of the lounge flickered, the goose clamor of the patrons was remote, under glass. In a nearby chair, a red-faced man in a sky-blue windbreaker and lemon-colored slacks lay snoring, mouth agape.

  Shelley surfaced and turned seal-like on her shoulder, giving Walker her best Esther Williams smile. He finished his champagne and closed his eyes. It seemed to him then that there was something mellow to contemplate, a happy anticipation to savor—if he could but remember what it was. Easeful, smiley, he let his besotted fancy roam a varicolored landscape. A California that had been, the pursuit of happiness past.

  What came to him was fear. Like a blow, it snapped him upright. He sat rigid, clutching the armrest, fighting off tremors, the shakes. In the pool a few feet away, Shelley Pearce was swimming lengths in an easy backstroke.

  Walker got to his feet, went to the edge of the pool and sat down on the tiles with his legs dangling to the water. Shelley had left her champagne glass there. He drank it down and shivered.

  In a moment, Shelley swam over to him.

  “Don’t you want to swim?”

  He looked into the illuminated water. It seemed foul, slimy over his ankles. He thought it smelled of cat piss and ammonia. Shelley reached up and touched his knee. He shook his head.

  “You O.K.?”

  He tried to smile. “Sure.”

  In the lounge, the musical proprietor was singing “Bad Bad Leroy Brown.” Light-headed and short of breath, Walker stood up.

  “I think I’m feeling cold,” he called to Shelley.

  She paddled to a ladder and climbed out of the pool.

  “You don’t look good, Gordon. You’re not sick, are you?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s just the grass. It’s all in my head.”

  They went upstairs holding hands. Walker took another shower, wrapped a bathrobe around himself and lay down on the bed. Shelley Pearce stood naked before the terrace doors, facing the black mist-enshrouded plane of sky and ocean, smoking. A J. J. Johnson tape was running—“No Moon at All.”

  When the piece ended she started the tape over again, scatting along with it under her breath. She went back and stood at the window like a dancer at rest. The back of one hand was cocked against her flexed hip, the other at a right angle from the wrist, holding her cigarette. Her head was thrown back slightly, her face, which Walker could not see, upturned toward the darkness outside.

  He got off the bed and walked across the room and kissed her thighs, kneeling, fondling her, performing. His desire made him feel safe and whole. After a few minutes she touched his hair, then languidly, sadly, she went to the bed, put her cigarette out and lay down on her side facing him. He thought she wept as they made love. When she came she gave a soft mournful cry. Spent, he was jolly, he laughed, his fear was salved. But the look in her eyes troubled him; they were bright, fixed, expressionless.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello, Gordon.”

  “Some fun, eh, kid?”

  “Just like old times,” Shelley said.

  “Why did you ask me about the beds?”

  “ ’Cause I work for a living,” she told him. “I need a good night’s sleep. If there was only one bed I’d have to drive home.”

  “You treat yourself better than you used to.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Everybody treats themselves better now. You’re supposed to.” After a moment she said, “Hey, Gordon, how come you’re sniffing after Lee Verger?”

  “Come on,” Walker said. “Don’t.”

  “I’d like to hear you tell me how that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s my script,” Walker said. “I gave it my best. I want to see her do it. In fact, I want you and Al to set it up for me.”

  “Al doesn’t want to do it, bubba.”

  “Do it on your own. Play dumb. Tell him you tho
ught it was O.K.”

  “Why don’t you take a rest?”

  “I don’t rest,” Walker said.

  “I knew you’d pull this,” she said. “Al told me about your lunch. I wasn’t surprised.”

  “Did you call them?”

  “I called Charlie Freitag’s office and I spoke with Madge Clark,” Shelley said in a lifeless voice. “I guess they’ll put you up for a day or two. Charlie likes you. Charlie likes everybody. They have to work it out with the location people, so it’ll take a little time to fix.” She stared at him with a vexed child’s stare. He avoided her eyes.

  “How about giving other people a rest? Like Connie, huh? Or Lee. Why don’t you give her a rest?”

  He only shook his head.

  “She’s a fucking psycho.”

  “That’s your story, Shelley.”

  “Oh yes she is, Gordon. She’s just as crazy as catshit and you better leave her alone.”

  “I want to see her,” Walker said.

  “You belong in a hospital,” Shelley Pearce told him.

  He smiled. “Your boss told me the same thing.”

  “Sure,” Shelley said. “We’re in league against you.” She got up and walked to the foot of the bed and leaned against the bedboard. “You know what crazy people like most, Gordon? They like to make other people crazy.”

  “You have it wrong,” Walker said, “you and Al.”

  “Her husband is with her. Her kids too. You want to walk into that?”

  “I want to work,” Walker said slowly. “I want to get back into it. I need a project I care about. I need to work with people I care about.”

  “You’re so full of shit, Gordon.”

  “Don’t be vulgar,” Walker said.

  “You’re an assassin, man. You don’t even care if you don’t get laid if you can make some woman unhappy.”

  She stood beside the bed shielding her eyes from the harsh lamplight, then turned her back on him, folded her arms and walked toward the balcony with her head down.

  “Every time I see you, we talk about your love life, don’t we? We never talk about mine.”

  “How’s your love life, Shell?”

  “Thanks for asking,” she said.

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously?” she asked, rounding on him. “Well, it does just fine without you in it. I get along without you …”